Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 69: Gemma Kemp

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

Gemma Kemp is a forensic pathologist and a mum of two little girls. We talked about the juxtaposition of motherhood with a job which is on the one hand fascinating, but on the other hand, unremitting and emotionally demanding. We agreed that the British attitude to dealing with death is generally unhelpful, from the euphemisms used to talk about it, to our inability to face the inevitable. Gemma explained in down-to-earth terms how she performs an autopsy, which she does day in and day out. She explained she feels honoured to be present at this final part of a person’s journey. But she also shared that sometimes these encounters stay with and trouble her - especially when they involve children. Spinning Plates is produced by Claire Jones. Post-production is by Richard Jones.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Peloton all-access membership separate. Learn more at onepeloton.ca slash running. Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Hello, I'm just wandering around trying to find a quiet space in the house. Let's try this

room. No, one in there, one in there. I'm going to sit on the stairs. I quite like sitting on the stairs. I had a late night last night. I went sang in texas oh now richard's coming down the stairs i can't find anywhere quiet now you have a gentle sound of his birkenstocks going past um yeah last night i was in texas in oxfordshire singing for ed harcourt and his wife gita's um fundraiser for War Child. It was really lovely. Sang in the church. I got to sing Like a Prayer in a church.

Hold on, Jess, I'll be down in a second. And then Friday night we went to the circus, and that was amazing. And now Mickey is pretty obsessed with circus stuff. We've been listening to circus music playlists on Spotify today. He's convinced he can do tricks and flips. And I also sang at the rugby premiership final yesterday at Twickenham Stadium, which was quite fun. So, yes, it's been a busy old weekend.

And that's why I've only just managed to sit down to record this now. It's 7pm on Sunday night. Oh, it's like handing your homework in late. But I have got a really fascinating chat for you with Gemma Kemp, who is a forensic pathologist. So she does post-mortems. And she actually contacted me. And she said, she wrote to my management actually and said I think I'd be a really good person for you to speak to because of my job which led me to

think a lot about what caused her to contact me because obviously it's one thing to say yes it's important I talk you know I've got an interesting job of course that's great but I thought what else and I wondered if it's because Gemma's clearly brilliant at her job and it's clearly also something she really enjoys but it's also very demanding and emotionally quite challenging and I wondered if it was just quite nice for her to sort of say I'm here and I do this and sometimes some of it's really hard and that doesn't mean she doesn't enjoy her work but just it's quite nice to acknowledge that it's challenging because probably working doing autopsies is quite a lot of the time quite a I don't know quite a quiet skill you're on your own

a lot of times with you know in a room with dead bodies and maybe you know it's nice just to share the aspects of that which are quite profound and poignant and what is quite interesting is that only the week before last I had my own experience that was also quite poignant dealing with death and that is now just be prepared this story is a little bit shocking but uh i went away to liverpool and i was doing a gig uh it was a private party that was singing at so i went with just my sound guy and tour manager duncan and we just pulled up at the hotel that we were gonna to stay at so it was about quarter to seven at night I was on stage at half nine so I had a couple of hours to eat supper

get ready and as I got out the taxi I went round to the back of the boot to collect my bag and at the same time the multi-story car park opposite us uh something caught my eye and then there was a very loud sound of something hitting the ground and my first thought was oh someone's taken like a very heavy bag out of their boot and it's just chucked over the side of the multi-story car park well in fact it wasn't a bag it was a person and it turned out that at the same time as Duncan and I were getting out the taxi someone had also decided to take their own life and jumped from the top of this I don't know 13 14 story car park and the reason I am sharing that with you is because it made me think about some of the things that Gemma said about the

relationship she has with the person who comes to her when they're dead and how she feels a sort of relationship with them and in giving them justice for however they died now sometimes of course that's just natural causes sometimes you know with the question mark obviously otherwise you wouldn't do an autopsy but sometimes there are question marks and it's up to Gemma and her colleagues to figure out what's gone on so I felt a similar thing with this man who had jumped I thought I wondered what was going on with him that led him to think that that was the only solution he had left and given that it was only Duncan and I and the taxi driver that stood there I thought about the fact that it's quite poignant that we were there in the last moments of that that guy's life and I don't know

who he was and I don't know if there's any way of me finding out who he was. But if anyone has lost someone recently in that way, then yes, I can... I don't know, I suppose you just think about the concentric circles, don't you? Of who's affected by, I don't know, the actions when people take them like that. I always thought about the friends and family, but I never really thought about witnesses, bystanders. Anyway, I suppose I'm just mulling on it, really.

It's quite nice to talk about it with you. And with Gemma's chat, obviously we had to be quite careful about confidentiality with the people she's talking about in the cases. people she's talking about in the cases and something that we had to edit out was some of Gemma's first cases um because of the level of detail we went into in our chat so I understand what has taken out but with Gemma's permission I can share with you there was one really poignant description she gave of her first cases she did three autopsies on the same, on her first day that she was actually actively doing them, she did three in one day. Mummy! Yes, Mickey, coming!

And one of them was a teenage boy who'd been involved in a road traffic accident and they'd had to cut his puffer jacket off, which meant that Gemma was in a room with this young boy and feathers from his puffer jacket were... Hold on, Mickey, i don't really want that you stupid we're like flowing flying up in the air while she was with him i thought that was almost quite painterly but also really again poignant says that word again i guess

anyway sorry for the waffling on but um i had a lot to say and you've now oh i think he seems to be watching something about a dinosaur. Oh, giving birth to another dinosaur? What happened there, Mickey? Anyway, having fun in the sun. I will see you on the other side. Thanks for joining me. So, Gemma, yeah, you're one of like three people I think that I've ended up talking to who've put

themselves forward for chatting to me which I really love because I think with this whole thing with the podcast I think it's really lovely when people think actually I've got I don't feel I've quite been represented and you're right your job is something I've never spoken to anybody who does what you do, but I'm deeply fascinated. So the treat is all mine. So why don't we start with that? What is it that you do for a living? Okay, so I'm a forensic pathologist, which means I'm a medical doctor. So I went through medical training and trained in pathology. Essentially, the main part of my role is to do autopsies, also called postmortem examinations which is um examining the body after

death to determine how they died um so we have what we term routine post-mortem examinations or pms where there's not any suspicious circumstances so there's kind of two categories there's the forensic side which is suspected homicide, murder, and the routine cases, which is where you just don't know why someone has died for a medical reason, or there may be an accident or suicide, drug-related, alcohol, all those sorts of categories. So if someone died in those circumstances,

if you're in England or England and Wales, it would be the coroner that instructed the post-mortem examination and in Scotland where I work it's the procurator fiscal so I do those I do basically any type of autopsy absolutely any scenario whereby someone has died and I don't I don't know if you were able to answer this but how frequently does a dead body need an autopsy? It's, I don't actually know the percentages, but it's not as many as you would think because most people who die, they are elderly or they have a long-term condition and thereby their doctor would be able to write up a death certificate for them.

So, but yeah, we've certainly got enough to keep us occupied yeah so this is okay so of a typical week are you generally working monday to friday yes yes and then there will be on call around that so i might be on call for a few days in the week or i might not or and i might be on the weekend um but yes the kind of day-to-day routine so we have post. So we have routine post-mortem examinations every morning where I work. And there's always plenty of them because I work in a big department with a big team. So in other parts of the country, they maybe have smaller mortuaries and they don't have so many post-mortems every single day. They might have them every few days or something like that.

But because I work in a large department, we always have always have them every day every day every day okay and how long have you been doing that so um I've been a consultant so fully qualified forensic pathologist for nearly eight years and before that I was in training for a long time it takes a long time to train yeah I think um my producer Claire was telling me about 13 years does that sound about right yeah so I graduated in 2004 and then was fully qualified um 2014 so that's all my so that's like 10 years I mean I could have done it quicker but I'm I had trouble getting my exam for the first time and I had a baby so I kind of lengthened the period of my training with that okay so you were having a baby around the time that you were also qualifying I had I

got pregnant um I took so the at the end of your training you have a final exam which is two and a half days of being examined oh that's intense it's very intense it's quite horrific is that a practical you're doing practical and oral and written and microscope slides five components watched yes oh yeah hand really shaking while you're doing it yes it's like sort of take the idea of like a driving exam and then like amplify by a million oh my word so when did you get pregnant then and that's so I did my first attempt at the exam when I wasn't pregnant and then I rebooked and by the time I resat it six months later I was I think 16 or 18 weeks pregnant after a really horrific first trimester so feeling really really nauseous which is really good when you great time looking inside people um I mean I'm laughing mirthlessly but actually that must have been really really tricky and you obviously passed that second time

no I passed the third time so so then that was actually the first time I left my baby was to go and sit the exam. Oh, wow. Yeah, and I had to go. I was living in Newcastle then, and I had to go to Liverpool, and I'd never left her. She was 13 months. And, yeah, I was bawling at the airport, not just from leaving her, but the stress of the exam.

So stressful. Because it felt like, oh, you've got to get it now. You've got to get it now, you know? Because you have to get it to qualify. Yeah, and you've been through it a few times and you've had that time off and had your baby and thinking, right, got to get back into that. And did you ever question going back to finish?

Oh, no, not at all. No, no, I was very much... I needed to only take six months off for financial reasons anyway and I needed to get back in to get, you know, it was just to have the time to study. But, I mean, it's hard to study when you have a six-month-old to a year, you know. Yeah, and how are you finding that in your headspace, this studying? Do you remember it?

I just, not really. I can remember sitting at the kitchen table, like studying. And also, you know, I'd already done it twice. So it's kind of, yeah, the knowledge was there. It's just a hard exam whereby it's kind of opinion based. That probably just sounds like sour grapes. I wasn't good enough. But, you know, it was, you have two examiners and they make the decision.

So, yeah, it was, and it was the first time I'd failed anything it was really hard because you know I'd always been sort of high achiever and passed all my exams to get to medical school etc etc so that was a real you know kind of failing something for failing something so important for the first time and being a new mother yeah it was a really hard time yeah and I wonder actually if that's quite a common character trait for people who tend to end up in those sort of professions that they tend to be highly academic therefore pretty high achievers in that as well studious you know and uh yeah so that first time of failing must have felt like a real shock and then doing it again sort of into a pregnancy and thinking yeah my head's feeling a bit scrambled

here and I don't quite feel like myself if you're really feeling unwell as well yeah yeah it was it was like that and uh I had a very amazing boss at the time and the second time when I failed when I was pregnant he just turned up at the door with flowers which meant the world to me was so it was really lovely yeah yeah but your your determination that this was the field you wanted to absolutely yeah yeah what made you want to choose it in the first place how does that was it a sort of narrowing down as you went through your medical training or do you have to already know that's where you're headed when you start I mean it depends on the person you know it's up to them for me for me I I always wanted to be a doctor from very young like eight years old I was just fascinated with the way the human body works it just just completely gripped me and and then sort of when I was in my teenage

years and working towards my my GCSEs and A levels and I have to admit it it was the teleprograms you know the oh this looks interesting and I can remember um this because this is pre-internet I had to go to the school library and look it up in a careers book you know a forensic pathologist and uh and it said you needed a medical degree and I remember in my cocksure 16 year old way oh well I'm already going to do that so I'll just do that amazing and so just yeah and the thing is because it's because it's dealing with death and not living people you have to kind of keep it on the QT because you have to sell you sell my caring side

that sounds really awful like oh I'm pretending I do care honestly but I just really wanted to do that job but okay why is that the bit that what was it about it that really appealed I think it's just fascinating I mean it really is and and every day is is different and you're learning something new every single day. You know, and I know most of medicine is like that. But I think as well, because with the post-mortem examination, you need to know a lot about all the body systems. It's kind of like you're a GP of death. You know, you have to sort of know about a background of a lot of things,

often reading up, obviously, because you can't know everything about everything. But it's that and the human interest because you get a little tale of the lead up to this person's death and a little snippet of their life and what was happening and it's just fascinating it's just oh it's amazing like and some of the stories you know truth is always stranger than fiction we get the most interesting and get and you know just yeah it's it's really really fascinating and I've never lost that fascination even though you know obviously the practicalities are a bit more difficult these days when I was in training I was like oh let's hang around let's stay on and now I'm working out how long it's going to take me whether I can pick my kids up from school. Yeah, well, yeah, those things that the sort of other factors of life kind of come in around,

you know, sort of sit alongside all these things that we want for ourselves too. And I think, you know, I asked about, you know, what it is about that, you know, about forensic pathology. But I actually, I mean, I completely get the idea of the fascination of it. And it's funny because I know you said about keeping it on the quiet on one hand. of the fascination of it and it's funny because I know you said about keeping it on the quiet in one hand but actually I think culturally we've kind of got quite a weird um juxtaposition sometimes haven't we between an awkwardness with aspects of death but in terms of entertainment a complete fascination with it actually yeah yeah certainly yeah and I know that um the program Silent Witness is credited as actually seeing a big uptake in young women heading towards your profession.

Certainly. So sometimes it's a really direct thing of entertainment influencing things. Yes. I mean, there's more women in medicine now anyway. Like, I think there's more than half in the entry. So you're going to get more women in medicine represented, although there are still more male-dominated fields like surgery because of the hours, I think. The hours and the culture, I don't know.

I mean, I never really went into that. But certainly there's been a change in forensic pathology. When I started out with my interest in my early 20s, you know, making an interest, it was definitely male-dominated. There weren't that many women in it. And now it's definitely more level, it's more even. Typically, how much information do you get about the people you're about to perform an autopsy on?

Usually quite a lot. So the police have to produce a sudden death report so you'll get like their background medical history and the circumstances that led up to their death you know because you need to know all that to be able to put it into context of your findings from the autopsy to be able to come up with the reason really you know you can't just you can't just go in knowing nothing you need to know their background health and what's happened, basically, because a lot of it is putting together what you found with the circumstances. Because you need to come up with a cause of death,

which is just one line or two lines or something, but then in your report you need to formulate conclusions where you discuss, does this fit? Say someone's fallen from a height, do the injuries fit that? Were they in a road traffic collision? Say they were a pedestrian hit by a car, you might get asked questions about the position they were in, things like that.

So you always need to know as much background as possible to correlate it with the pathological findings. But some of that's quite practical, like they were found in this position, this is what we think happened in the accident. But do you get things that are surrounding of surrounding that like the medical history up to then and maybe this is what they did for a profession this is what you know their family do you get information like that as well yeah yes we do yeah yeah I mean it's variable and some

some places I've worked before you got quite scanty information, but where I work currently, we get a lot, a lot of information. Yeah, so that's good. Well, is it always helpful to know all those things? I mean, you know, in terms of practicalities and time, you can't always, they're quite lengthy reports and you have to kind of skim through to find the pertinent information. But if it's more involved or, you and and then you you need to it's always good to have more information than less yes i can imagine that but i suppose i'm thinking

i don't like i've i don't have a problem when i'm watching a film and there's violence in a film but if i see anything remotely aggressive in real life i find it quite shocking and for some people when it comes to actual actually a real person in front of them is it too much for some people have you seen people studying and then thinking I can't actually do this not personally I think if you come into your training you've got far enough to know that you can deal with that yeah I think you have to we're a sort of self-selected bunch who you know that you can deal with it. And in some ways from the emotional side, you know, I don't have patients who die.

I don't know how, say, like a paediatrician does their job that cares for a child, say, with cancer in their diet. I mean, to my mind, that's just, I don't know how you go home and cope with that. Yeah. You know, whereas when I see them, they've already died. I didn't know them when they were alive. So you've got that kind of detachment.

Yeah. But the kind of, the realisation comes in with, say, having to meet the family or go to court and you see their family there, you know, and that's where it's like, that's what you do it for, you know, for them, for them for answers for justice well I was going to say do you do you feel like you're part of like actually there's a connection with you and that person obviously a connection that they'll never be aware of but that you are

helping keep a voice for them going beyond exactly yes yeah and you you're often giving families closure and answers and and that is rewarding you know so um I work in Scotland now so we don't have inquests but when I worked in England and you have an inquest you'd often meet the family and you know not always but quite a lot of the time they would be really thankful and grateful that you've taken the time to explain to them and answer their questions. And that's really, really rewarding. You know, that's kind of what you do it for. You know, you do it to do a good job and for justice, et cetera, et cetera. But in terms of making that, you know,

if I've helped in any way with someone's grief then that's fantastic you know and is that part of your training to understand about the family's grief and to think about justice or is it more about the medical side of how you deduce what's going on yes it's much more medical we don't really yeah there's no specific training in that sort of side of it it's just experiential you know it's interesting though isn't it because that's presumably ends up being quite a big part of the job yeah it does and um I I was interested in this because I felt like there it isn't really acknowledged the kind of emotional impact on on us and and it's is very much a sort of well you pick this get you know stiff up a lip get on with it type thing and so I did

do a little survey among my colleagues um and I worked with a a girl who's a girl a woman who was a student in psychology and occupational psychology and she looked into it and she did some long-form interviews with a few of my colleagues. And that's something I've been meaning to get published when I get a spare minute. And that was in conjunction with Dr Richard Shepard, who's written a book. It's his kind of memoir of his cases because he's retired,

but he does touch on the impact that that had on him. And it was significant. And I know him you know I know him because it's a small profession we all kind of know each other we see each other at conferences and things like that and he was very keen to get behind that that exploration of the more yeah because of course it's going to have an impact of course it is that's why I said it must take up and being quite a big bit and it sounds a little bit like it's sort of passed on to you to just sort of fill in the gaps for where that where those where that is because obviously it's pretty bespoke that's how well you deal with those things you know there might be people that end up doing what you do because actually maybe

something happened to someone that they knew and that ended up sparking you know there's all sorts of reasons where you get drawn to something that's got a you know that sort of passion vocational element to it so that is interesting and I wonder as well if that's part of a broader dialogue we've I've noticed recently this might be something that's been going on for a long time but it's sort of I've noticed that there's much more books about people talking about the emotional impact of being involved in medical professions. It seems to be something that the conversation is happening more in that way. Yes, I agree. I think it is. There's been lots more books and chat.

And just generally, it's more acceptable to talk about things impacting you, I think, in society, isn't it? You know, people are more willing to say, actually, that was really upsetting, that was a, you know, and come forward and either get professional help or even at least tell a friend. And the more of that, the better, because the suicide rates, the suicides I see,

you know, it's a big problem, especially men, young men. young men yeah absolutely it really is and um and you're right conversations and and just having that support and places to put things like that I can't really see a time when it hasn't really been been beneficial but as for you personally it's one thing to have all that on your own but when you're also raising a young family so you had your first baby when you were qualifying yes yeah I was yeah I was towards the end of my training um and was that something did you always want to be a mum yes I did yeah um I just always did yeah yeah and uh and I never kind of questioned that

I couldn't do both I don't know why I just I was just like yes I'm going to be a forensic pathologist and yes I'm going to be a mother and yeah it works out better when you don't question it because you do the art most things lead to this is not very practical and then so then you had your second two girls isn't it yes yeah uh-huh so yeah I um uh so I did my training in Newcastle and then at the end um I would have happily stayed but there wasn't a job for me so that's why I ended up in in Glasgow for for the job and um and I had my second daughter I think a couple of years into that that job so there's three and a half years between my girls lovely and how did you have you managed to find what you're doing like when we spoke on the phone you talked quite a lot about

compartmentalization is that something that you always knew you were quite good at or reliant on as a way of dealing with things? I don't think I think of it in those terms. I just kind of get on with it, you know, and there's always so much to do that you don't sort of have the time to contemplate how you're dealing with it. I mean, I'm quite chatty and I'll always share cases with my colleagues

and I think that's good, you know, and I'll tell friends as well if something has upset me and I think that's been enough you know to to deal with it but things stay with you you know certain cases stay with you I unfortunately well fortunately child deaths are few and far between we don't see that many but that means that I could probably remember every single child I've been involved in you know um and that's worse when you're a mum definitely like when I before I was a mother it was still upsetting but there's something about them getting to the age so I can remember when Frankie my eldest was like three and I was

it wasn't even my case I was just I was walking through the body store and there was a girl who looked just like her being like be prepared for a family viewing and I was just like I turn away I was like that's too close for comfort because she she had the same hairstyle and everything and I was just like I can't I can't look at that that's just you know so yeah I think especially seeing children who are the age of your children you know it's it really brings it home and but like I said few thankfully few and far between yeah but it's amazing I mean even hearing that story sort of second hand is sort of knocks the wind out of you a little bit and I didn't write so when you said the body stock and you described so when when you're at work is that is that just like one floor of the building I'm just trying to

picture it well yeah I mean it's quite unusual where I work I think it's probably the biggest mortuary in the UK it's absolutely enormous you need to boast you come from a different mortuary yeah and no offense no offense to any other mortuary it just happens to be really well too so I mean this so the body store is two walls of fridges, and we've got storage for 300. So it's enormous. And then there's the post-mortem room, and then a series of other rooms. But like I say, this is quite unusual. Most mortuaries are much smaller.

They only have a few tables for doing the post-mortems and smaller body stores. Okay, and are they often located within hospitals yes yes so it's your one located it is yes yeah but there are some city mortuaries standalone buildings which may be owned by the police it's different places around the country of kind of historical what they've inherited in terms of but yes the majority of mortuaries are within hospitals yeah and does it make you you know completely unfazed by death or is it do you feel like it's because it's it contained within work have you ever been

confronted by some death outside of work and it's like explored how that feels if it's different or the same that makes sense yes I it's like what you said before about seeing violence and I don't think that gets any less shocking just because you've seen the end result of it you know in terms of real life um when I was a teenager I saw I witnessed an accident I saw an old lady get hit by a bus and her leg almost amputated. I was 14. And that was so upsetting because... That's really shocking. Because it was just like,

and it was like it happened in slow motion because I kind of passed her on the road and I just knew she wouldn't get across the road in time and I turned around and saw it happen. And that, I don't think anything I see in my job takes away from how shocking that would be, even though I was younger. You know, I think seeing an accident, seeing violence is always going to be shocking, irrespective of what I've seen.

And I can look at a body with injuries and say, oh, you know, that's horrendous. You can imagine, you know, but I think you have to take a step back because if you spend too much time standing there thinking oh that must have been painful and horrible you know you wouldn't be able to concentrate and do the job in hand so what happens then what kicks in if you're looking at someone who's had something horrific happen to the end of their life like what what kicks in to go don't just stand there staring just practical practicalities, job needs doing. And are you often working alongside other people at that point? So they're maybe being, you know,

because everybody does things in their own time, don't they? Yeah, no, we just, in Scotland we have two forensic pathologists because the Scottish law, you have corroboration, so you need two. So I actually do those cases with another, which is great because, you know know you have another colleague to discuss with and and and um not that you know you can other places where they do it on their own that's totally valid as well of course you know we're all experienced and everything but that is especially when you're starting out that was a major advantage and then you've got you know

there's a multi-technician there there's a photographer there they might be police officers there everybody's there to do a job so you just you just get on with it yeah and how often then are you dealing with homicide is that that is that quite a weekly thing it's like really unpredictable it's unpredictable you know so you might get a week where you have a few and then you might get a few weeks where you get none. It's just, there's no rhyme or reason to it. And sometimes this results in you giving evidence. Is that always the outcome if you've worked on a... Not necessarily because you'd only give evidence in court

if there's an actual trial. So if someone pleads guilty to murder, then there won't be a trial. Or if at the outcome there's not enough evidence to press charges, then you wouldn't go to murder then there won't be a trial or or or if if at the outcome there's not enough evidence to press charges then you wouldn't go to court then but yes um going to court is part of the career and a part that I think puts quite a few doctors off because you know it's quite high pressure that's what I was going to say because again that's I think that's another skill set being able to be in that environment and to, effectively, do public speaking and to be looked at and scrutinised and cross-examined.

So is that part of your training? Yes, as part of the forensic pathology training, we do an expert witness training course because you're classed as an expert witness, which means that you're allowed to give opinion evidence to the court, whereas, say, an A&E doctor who documented an injury, they would be classed as a professional witness, so they're just giving evidence as to the facts, whereas I and others are allowed to say, I think this caused this person's death or this caused this injury,

and, you know, and it's quite nuanced. It's how certain are you, you you know and how certain can you be and um because you know there are cases where it's obvious you know a stab wound to the heart you know it's clear cut that's what's happened it's a person stabbed with a knife etc etc but then there are cases whereby someone's been assaulted but there's lots of other factors and you're trying to weigh up actually how did they die and how did they come by their death as it were what sequence of events led to that and yeah so it's I mean that's again yeah that's a part of the job it is is um performing it is you know you have to be comfortable with standing up and you know speaking clearly and

being sure of yourself and yeah and so all the way alongside this you've got your little girls so how how aware are they of what they sorry and you have told me but they're up there they did you say eight and five nine and five yeah yeah uh-huh um probably too aware quite communicator they yeah i'm like that as well by the way i tell my kids i tell them every yeah i mean obviously not everything in terms of like you know sexual violence it has to be age appropriate but they know what i do i often get phone calls at dinner and they'll hear me arranging a post-mortem or something like that. Or I'll be the mum in the corner of the school playground, like ringing the mortuary and saying we need to do this at this time.

So yeah, no, they know. My five-year-old's told her teacher what mummy does. So yeah, I do wonder probably whether I should rein it in a bit but I my elder girl um really likes like Operation Ouch and you know the CBBC program and so I would never push them into medicine but if that's what they want to do she's she's just interested she's she's read a few books and stuff like that she finds it interesting yeah well i think you'd hope that no matter what they end up doing being fundamentally is interested in how human beings work it's pretty sort of endlessly interesting to everybody yeah i thought um i did actually wonder has it ever been that your medical training for examining dead bodies meant that you're able to

work out what's happening with someone when they're alive and well seemingly well well an ailment or something i mean it's a bit rusty because i haven't treated any living people since 2005 but um but i think some things stay with you you know You still know what sort of symptoms and signs people present with. Or maybe something you've seen in an autopsy and thought, when you do this, does it feel like that? I mean, I can offer an opinion. It's a limited opinion. If people come and, what's this rash?

And think, like my parents or something, what's this ailment? I'm like, no, not really my area of expertise, Mum. And so during this time as well, when we were talking on the phone, you were saying you're now a single mum as well, is that right? Yes, yeah. So how long has that been the case? So we separated just after the first lockdown, and we were divorced last year.

Oh, wow. So you've had quite a dramatic couple of years. It's been interesting times so I guess you know we talk a lot probably speaking about things that make you feel that you're spinning a lot of plates but that's another thing to introduce isn't it when you're going through something like that and I know we we spoke to um Helen from um she's a comedy director it's called me mummy yes yeah about divorce and about how that whole process is um and you know not to fight but to find a point on it but I suppose you know how has that changed the dynamic of the relationship with you and your daughters has it been a big factor um luckily we're on really good

terms and he lives close by so we still you know he sees them regularly and we we still do things together as well so that's really good that's helped them obviously when we first told them they were devastated and it was really upsetting for all concerned because you know no one no one wants things to end you don't get married to have that outcome you know um but unfortunately you know that that's the way things went and um so and I I think it's I don't see that much difference really I think because we're I mean I know that they'd say obviously they want us all in the same house together but they they're pretty they're pretty level you know they seem pretty all right I hope you know and I just we both me and my ex both foster a kind of just open I just

want them to be able to tell us anything anything that's on their mind speak to us you know and I hope they can do that I feel like they can and when you're working how has work changed for you as you as your children have grown has it has it sort of stayed in the same place in your heart as what it was at the beginning or does it sort of morph along when you're also raising a family that's a good question um no I think I think it has I mean obviously in terms of time, that's the main thing. But I just fit around them. And in terms of, obviously, I can't work from home to do my post-mortem examinations.

That might be taking you a bit far. Yeah, yeah. I don't think my neighbours would be impressed. But everything else I can, so I can write my reports from home, I can take calls, and that was something that we'd actually wanted before lockdown, COVID happened, and it had always been dismissed as too difficult technologically in terms of security, in terms of the information we hold you know because it's

medical records it's private um police records things like that um and then within a few weeks of lockdown we suddenly had been solved and we got our laptops to go home which has been an absolute game changer because it means that I can you know work with the kids in the house more flexibility yeah albeit the difficulty of having a smaller child when you're looking at injuries that they just barge in quickly reduce down the the screen so they don't see anything too nightmare inducing you know yeah and does it can you sometimes it does it sometimes for incredibly shocking afresh when you look at something would you feel a lot more like I think I think I'm so used to it you know I think you just you just I'm just so used to it and how important is it when you're

looking at a dead body how important is it that you reach a sort of conclusion of what happens do you always get to a point where you've sort of worked it out? Not always. No, unfortunately, it's quite frustrating where, you know, you've done all the tests, you've looked at everything thoroughly and sometimes you just don't get an answer and you really want to have an answer for the family and sometimes you just don't know why someone's died, you know? And, I mean, that doesn't happen that often

and sometimes it might be because they've been decomposed because they've been dead for a long time. And obviously that renders it impossible to kind of find a cause of death. But yeah, sometimes that, and then it depends on the circumstances. It might be, say it was a young person who dropped down dead,

suddenly it might be the chance of a cardiac genetic condition or something which you can raise the possibility of but that often doesn't leave anything physically traced that you can see so but yeah that's the aim of the game you know the aim of the game is to come up with a cause of a death and an explanation so that's what you're always striving towards and thinking about tailoring you whatever you're going to test for, you know. Yeah, and I mean, you sort of touched upon when you saw that awful image of the little person that was the same sort of age and same hairdo to one of your children, but when you're actually the one

who has to perform the autopsies and that's what's happening, how do you find it to then have to be able to sort of compartmentalize it um so I think you know obviously certain cases get to you more than others and and sad to say you know we we have a lot of cases that we in terms of types of murders you know we see quite a lot of stabbings and it's just quite routine. I don't mean to sound callous with that, but, you know, we do see them, we're used to seeing them. But then if you get a child or a young person

or it's particularly violent or it's just horrible circumstances, then you... I mean, it's all right while you're doing it because you just get on with it, because you've just got to document all the the injuries you've got to get through it and um but yeah I'm not I wouldn't lie I wouldn't lie by saying that I don't go away and think about them and I can still remember yeah well it's making me think every time you read a story in the paper and it'll talk about some you know we've had quite a few cases haven't we coming out

about awful examples of abuse that's been happening with kids and they're shocking and horrible and it's you know you're sort of making remember that there are people involved in that in making those discoveries people that that are like doing the job you're doing i think sometimes you sort of don't you just you think you hear the story and you hear the fact that they've got and you don't think about that part of the journey that they've been on at the end where that's all being ascertained yeah and I suppose you're part of a big team of people that are dealing with that from you know the people who first got involved people who first discover going to there's lots of mechanisms yes yeah route

sorry to that destination of coming to some kind of picture emerging of what went on so there is that sort of comfort in that and i suppose you got to it's a bit like you're saying before about you know being able to give something to the families and actually the justice element, that's quite a big deal, isn't it? Yes, it is, yeah. And try not to get over-invested in a case, but sometimes, you know, we're only human and there have been times where, not many, but where I've felt that the outcome in the court case wasn't what I... I didn't feel like justice was done

and that kind of doesn't feel like justice was done. And that kind of doesn't sit well, you know. And do you come from a family of anyone else in the medical field? No, no. Not at all. I don't know where. No. My brother's not. I've got one brother.

He's not in medicine. And my mum and dad were not. So I don't know where it came from. What do they think of what you ended up doing? I think they're really pleased, yeah, yeah. So I always enjoyed the kind of explaining sometimes difficult concepts so that anyone can understand them. And having two parents who are not medical,

I'd come back from my holidays in medical school and I'd say, let me explain this, do you understand it? And I'd practice examination and things like that on them and they'd humour me and my grandparents as well. That's brilliant. Yeah, and I suppose when you're out and about and people ask what you do, what's the most common thing that they ask you about?

The most common comment is, oh, I know someone who does that because they've got like some person who did a forensic science course at uni. They kind of think that, because there's forensic sciences, chemistry, biology, like crime scene investigation. But that's the science background, whereas I'm medical.

So I think a lot of people don't know. Yeah, put them together. Yeah, yeah. So mostly, oh, that's really interesting. medical so I think a lot of people don't know yeah put them together yeah yeah so um mostly oh that's really interesting you know occasionally oh I couldn't do that yeah but I think these people are quite fascinated yeah and actually it was only really when we were talking that I sort of started to think about all the element of actually the reality of it rather than just this sort of slightly like I'm honest it probably feels quite sort of like quite excited at the idea of actually

sort of the fascination of working things out maybe that's just a thing that some people are kind of going oh I'm really intrigued by that but um I do think that I suppose as well I'm just fascinated by culturally our relationship with death anyway. And how do you perceive it from where you're standing, how most people deal with all of that stuff? I think that we don't really deal with it very well, to be honest. I think it's kind of, I think there's a lot of denial goes on and I think most people try to avoid it and use euphemisms you know they don't like to say oh she died you know they'll say she passed away or

you know all other things and um yeah I don't think I don't think we deal with it well at all no no um yeah it's true it's not really something that we're like i think the euphemisms don't help at all and i suppose for something that is so inevitable yeah yeah and completely unavoidable we're also just we kind of don't really want to think about you know the possibility like sometimes i remember as a kid having this realization looking at my own hand and being like one day that hand is that's just gonna I won't be in this body anymore and it was like a real kind of you know when you get that hot and cold chill when you're little you start thinking about your own mortality and I did the same with my parents I think every child thinks but what when you kind of get I think they say it's not until about seven

that you realize the true permanence of it and then it's like and then you realize that your mum or dad could die and I just I think I used to just cry I'd like at the thought of it you know yeah I think I think I'd probably still do that today you know yeah when your daughters like so when your eldest reached that point did you feel like you had things that could reassure her about understanding the unlikelihood of the bad things happening yeah yeah I think you know she knows what I do and she but she knows that most people live to an old age you know and and I and I'm extremely fortunate that I've only lost my grandparents who were quite elderly, you know. I have friends who've lost parents younger and my own mum lost her mum when she was 14.

And I used to think about that when I was little. I was like, I can't comprehend how awful that must be. So no, I try to, you know, I try to impress upon them that the vast, vast majority of people do live to a good age and have a nice life, you know. I try to impress upon them that the vast, vast majority of people do live to a good age. Yeah. And have a nice life, you know. Yeah, and there's a big difference between dying when you're old and then a death that's got, that's tragic.

Yeah, certainly. It's a different thing. So when you got in touch, Gemma, what was it that you really wanted? Why did you want to speak to me that's a really good question I just um I thought that I'd listened to a few of your other guests and I'd saw you'd not had a doctor on and I was like oh I could add into this as a as a very different kind of working mum um and I'm not the only forensic pathologist working mum I you know work with others as well who are juggling just the same and I think it's just um

yeah it's it's the practicalities of the timing but also the the kind of emotional side because you know you when you have children you you do anything for them when you die for them and and then to go and see children that have that it's just it's just hard it just it just lends a different element to being a working mother like for example I um when I was pregnant with my first child I was on a pediatric placement so I was watching the post-mortem of a 32 year old 32 week old fetus my baby was 32 weeks and I could feel her moving inside me and that's just surreal that's just like really I mean I didn't think I was bringing a living baby home you know when you know every every single way that it can go wrong you know um it's I didn't decorate a nursery or buy very much or anything like that you know and obviously all the ways that it can go wrong for mother as well with with with childbirth that

was and I was overdue and I was absolutely driving myself crazy with I didn't want to be induced because I knew about the risks of that I didn't want to have an epidural unless absolutely necessary because I'm slightly phobic about needles in the back from when I'd done a similar procedure as a junior doctor and, like, hurt someone, not permanently or anything like that, but she'd, you know, cause someone distress and that stayed with me. So I was like, if I can avoid having a needle in my back, that would be perfect.

And so... And then I was, like, 12 days late with her and I was like, days late with her and I was like she finally made an appearance but but I was you know reading the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists guidelines about the risks of stillbirth at this and yeah too much knowledge is a bad thing when you're a pregnant mum well that's what I was thinking when you're saying about knowledge is good but I was thinking actually sometimes accumulation knowledge introduces you to the idea of all the bad things that can happen I mean in my own when I was growing up I had in both households so my mum's house and my dad's house with my stepmom both

my mum and my stepmom were trying to have another baby and so my mum um she's spoken about this publicly so I'm not you, giving away her private things, but she had, like, ten miscarriages while I was growing up when I was a teenager. And then in the other house, my stepmum and my dad were having IVF. So I had that around me all the time. So I thought getting pregnant was really, really hard

and fraught with difficulty. So I'm thinking of you when you're confronted with these things, and obviously you can reassure your kids look what I see most people look like but actually maybe when it's your day-to-day maybe it does it is a bit harder to disconnect that so when you came to have your second baby did that had you kind of were you more relaxed about those things or was it worse with those things no it was yeah it was I was more relaxed and um I think because I'd successfully had a normal delivery and a healthy

child I think that that and I chose to have a home birth with my second oh amazing I always thought that sounds so nice yeah it was it was really lovely um apart from the agonizing pain of course but you know getting to go into your own bed afterwards was nice um yeah and I know that some of my colleagues were astounded that I'd made that choice but they'd had different experiences you know with with needing assistance and I took the very sort of practical well I'm low risk and and the and the guidance says if you're low risk the best place to be is a maternity-led unit or at home and I'd um had my my first daughter in a pool and that had really helped me and um I had been in a different area so that was in when I lived in Newcastle and then moved to Glasgow and there there was limited amount of pools in the in the the ward and I thought psychologically I really need the pool the pool really helped me last time yeah so that's kind of what pushed me into having the home birth

and I had a fantastic midwife a really good experience oh how lovely did you go back to work fairly soon after yeah six months okay and again never once questioned you it sounds like you really have found the thing that you want to do oh no and and I mean practically I had to because I was kind of the main breadwinner as well you know so but no no definitely not it was um yeah I was always gonna do both so when it's all going well what's your favorite bit of what you do that's a good question. Probably just the actual autopsies, really. Yeah.

And then the kind of intellectual side of trying to put it all together. Yeah. Yeah, it's satisfying. It is. And so it's not just what you find when you've done it. When you've done the like that when done the autopsy then you'll you'll send like blood and urine away for toxicology you might send the brain away for specialist neuropathology and and then you get all the pieces of the puzzle and you try

to put them together and sometimes you can it kind of all clicks yeah like yeah that's it that's what's happened and it's quite satisfying it That does sound satisfying. And, you know, as I probably say, like sort of trigger warning for anyone is a bit squeamish, but I just really want to know, what is the routine of doing an autopsy? So you've got the body there, naked, obviously, and you've read the report so you know what sort of case it is and then you will look them from head to toe,

a full examination for injuries or signs of any disease and things like that you can make a record of that we'll dictate that and then if it's a routine post-mortem the mortuary technician will what's called eviscerate so take the organs out so that's uh from tongue to pelvic organs so soft tissues so you make an incision at the base of the neck down to the pubic bone and remove the tongue and everything and whole so that's called the organ pluck so that goes

in a tub and then over to the trimming bench where I will dissect the organs in a set pattern so you do it the same every single time so that you always weigh all the organs you you do it the same every single time you know um so that you always weigh all the organs you you always cut them the same way and then you have a documentation of every single organ weight and what you found wow and so that's what happens every time yes and then

sometimes it's more involved depending on what's yeah so they might be say um for example if someone had broken a limbo and you might have to dissect to look for that or um yeah you just tailor that accordingly to what what the case is that is actually really fascinating and actually doesn't sound quite as sort of i mean presumably it's not there's certain processes that happen to the to bodies once you're past death so does it have a massive effect if you're doing it quite soon after death or a long time? So the only thing is if you do a post-mortem quite soon, they're still warm, which is not pleasant. I don't know, I don't enjoy that.

You know, I want them to be cold and been in the fridge. And then obviously the other end is if they're very decomposed, very decomposed, they might just be bones, you know, but levels of decomposition, you've got to deal with that, which is maggots and obviously the smell. And you sometimes doing this on a location? So do you mean going to like a scene? Yeah.

So sometimes we don't go to many crime scenes. Sometimes people are injured and then die in hospital. So you would only really go to a scene or a locus as it's referred to in Scotland if you needed to assist with movement or if there's a question of a sexual assault to take samples. But otherwise, even if a body is found quite badly decomposed, it might still end up coming your way? Oh, yeah, it'll always end up coming to the mortuary

for the post-mortem examination, yeah. And do you feel a bit like there's almost like a club of people for whom this is commonplace everyday work and then there's the people on the outside of it who ask questions like me yeah yeah so yeah I've got lots of friends who are colleagues both pathologists and mortuary technicians and so yeah I find that quite reassuring because I think it means that you know everybody's human and yeah and also there's a sort of routineness to it that i think is quite yeah again quite reassuring yeah i think you're running around going all dead body or being really serious that's not really part of how we deal with anything

else so why should it be that exactly yeah and i think you know we're always respectful obviously we're always respectful and they always get obviously stitched up to a high standard so that they're viewable you know they're presented the wash that everything you know and um all the people who work in the mortuary pride themselves on that you know giving a really good service to the family and does it change your relationship with your own body that's a good question I I try not to be a hypochondriac you know but I do I do appreciate my health yeah I do I think I think more so in recent years you know I've definitely tried to optimize my own health and I think you know I want to be around here for as long as possible for my daughters is that part of your swimming as well because you like going i do i go and launch myself into cold bodies of water with a load of other crazy sort of

i'm not going to say middle-aged women are we middle-aged i don't know mothers i think i'm middle-aged i'm 42 that must be middle-aged i'm 41 so then yeah yeah it's all right let's own it it's fine yeah so there's lots of women who go hooping and hollering as we get into four degree water wow is that something you do quite quite often every week now yeah really yeah have you always done that or is it took it up during lockdown friend of mine had been doing it for years and um with the swimming pool shut and you know the thing was it wasn't it wasn't too cold when I took up it and took it up in May and then and then the temperature drops and one year we were breaking the ice it was fantastic

fantastic yeah what's good what do you like about it it just makes you feel alive and it and no matter if you're having a bad day or whatever it just makes you feel really good it really does and I think it's got a lot of health benefits as well for your immune system and it's meant to stave off dementia and things like that but you just you kind of go along and you think oh do I really want to do this it's so cold you know I'm totally crazy what am I doing and then you always feel better after you've done it yeah it's just just really kind of life-affirming yeah the people who get into it seem to find it really exhilarating and just gives actually a real clarity yeah and I guess it's it's part of that thing that's spoken about a lot about mindfulness isn't it I've just you are just completely that

person in that moment and you'll know certainly yeah yeah yeah and also I mean there's some absolutely gorgeous places to swim in Scotland you know Loch Lomond and all the western island sea and everything like that and I'm lucky that they're close by and you just being just getting out getting you know when say for example I I've had a day where I knew I had to go in to do a murder post-mortem and I'll go up and have a swim first and then I know I've had some fresh air I've had some because I'm in a in a room with no windows and I might be up and have a swim first. And then I know I've had some fresh air, I've had some, because I'm in a room with no windows, and I might be there for hours, and it's just, yeah. So it's physical and mental health, really, yeah.

Yeah, I can see there's lots of benefits to that. And I did wonder, I mean, forgive me if I'm kind of getting the wrong end of this, but when you were talking before about the emotional support that's there for you when you're dealing with all this stuff. And you've got your medical training, and that's all pretty, that's really incredibly solid and thorough. But this gap that you've had to form about the tricky things you see and having a life outside of it,

I wonder if that was part of why you wanted to speak to me as well, just to sort of have that acknowledged a little bit? Yeah, I think, like, I know in the sort of blurb of your podcast it's it's like about finding a life outside of being doing whatever job you do and being a mum and I it's quite small that part for me you know um just just because of pressure of time you know yeah but I try to get the girls involved they've been up swimming not when it's icy

I think that would be classed as child abuse but they've swum in the summer with me and tried to get them outside and do things like that but there are things that I would like to have more time to do I used to I used to be I used to do arm drum I used to be in a choir and things like that and I haven't really had time to do that and then it all shut down so I was about to sign up with a choir and then and then that stopped so hopefully in future I'll come back and have they ever gone to work

with you they have they've been in the tea room I haven't let them you know um when when frankie was a baby i think she'd been in about five mortuaries before she was six months old you know but they just yeah just to meet my colleagues um so yeah frankie says she would she would like to see and i'm like no you're not no you're not old enough i would be desperate to see it yeah when are you gonna let her or i mean i suppose you've got... It would be whether it would be allowed. I mean, maybe if she's, like, teenager and applying to medical school, then that's a different matter, isn't it?

Yeah, of course, you've got the protection of the people's privacy and everything. In terms of her actually just seeing it, I bet, yeah, if it was me, if my mum, I'd be like, please let me come and see i'd be completely fascinated i'm completely fascinated now well thank you very much for coming to speak to me and for no problem patiently asking answering all the questions you've probably been asked by lots of people many times over pleasure i do think what you're doing is is

amazing and i i think actually that thing you said when you were saying about the doctors who have to work with people who may or may not make it, it reminded me of, there's a podcast I've been listening to called REM5, which is done by another guest I had called Helena Merriman. And it's about people who get these shock diagnosis. And in one of them, she spoke to the doctor, the consultant that had given someone this news that he had cancer and she said to the doctor, how do you find your relationship with your patient? And he said, I can remember every single one. And then he started crying

and it was actually a really significant moment because it made you think about, I think we were so used to having these things kind of, sometimes when something's medicalised, you can feel like it's also, it sort of knocks the edges off you you're sort of homogenized and all the edge that the person that you were when you walked into that building or that consulting room you're sort of not that that that's all outside there you're just a pile of notes so sometimes you know like like that boy you said you know the 15 year old boy with all the feathers and that car

accident and getting the information there's all this world of things that happen around people but actually how you die is like the last question mark of what happened in yeah the big big life events if you like I think and I think it's an immense privilege being any type of doctor I mean you know even just the training you know I get to see people come into the world and go out of them and everything in between you know like like um and it's it is it is such a privilege you there with people at you know such key moments of their life yeah absolutely and presumably sometimes you see something on them like a tattoo or some bit of jewelry or something they have they still have jewelry on when you see something on them like a tattoo or some bit of jewelry or something they have they still have jewelry on when you see sometimes yeah yeah those things

are really personal choices yeah uh-huh and then it tells you a little bit more about them and just sort of I suppose I'd probably find myself inclined to sort of chat to them or something yeah I think I I mean there's a difference yeah'm not saying, I'm not religious but I think you have to keep an open mind and I always felt like it was different when someone had just died as opposed to someone icy who's been dead for a while and if you believe

I don't know what I believe but I just feel like you know if there is a soul or something like that it's it's kind of gone by the time we get... No, I totally understand that. I've only really seen one dead body of a family member and he just wasn't the same person anymore. And I was actually so shocked at how quickly

it was the carrier, not the person. It's actually really remarkable yeah i don't know really where i stand on all that but it's definitely there's definitely a shift and i think sometimes people find it difficult to recognize their relatives because i think you know there's it we need the the life and the the in your eyes, really. To recognise someone who they are, it can be very difficult to see them. Yeah, it's just not them and not them at the same time. Yeah, exactly. They're not there.

Yeah. Oh, that's absolutely amazing. I'm sure I'll think of more things later. Maybe I'll have to text you or something. That's fine. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome.

Thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Well, I hope that's given you some food for thought. Thank you very much to Gemma for reaching out to me, actually. I had a lovely conversation with her and it really stayed with me. Yeah, I think it's quite incredible, really really what people end up doing for a living and it's interesting how you know we're still very squeamish about the idea of death but obviously all these jobs need to happen and all these roles need to be filled

and and actually I know a lot of people are really fascinated by all of it I think I'm pretty fascinated by all of it and finding out how you make it part of your day-to-day and the bits that become almost quite mundane and it's a very interesting insight so if anyone out there listening has got a job that you think I need to hear about you'd like to talk to me then please do reach out it's really nice to um to hear from you and hear what's going on. Yeah, everybody's got a story, haven't they? Meanwhile, I'm sat here with Mickey. He's watching Ryan's Toy Review, Ryan's World. Are you familiar with him?

You probably are. Who's that, Mummy? That's Ryan from Ryan's World. No, I mean, what are you doing? Oh, I'm recording a bit of my podcast. And Ryan, he's ridiculously successful. I think last year he earned something like $22 million. And he's about 10.

And his YouTube channel's called Ryan's World. And I always say, it's Ryan's World. We just live in it, don't we, Mickey? I know. I know, you've stopped now. You're watching a little dance routine now, aren't you? Look at that. Look at them jumping around.

Anyway, thank you to you. Thank you to Gemma. Thank you to Richard for letting me hand my homework in very late on a Sunday. Thank you to Claire Jones for being my brilliant editor and producer. Sorry, it's not my editor. That's Richard.

Oh, my God, my brain. And thank you to Ella May for the amazing artwork. But as ever, thank you to you for lending me your ears. And I hope you have a peaceful week. And I hope you don't mind me showing what happened in Liverpool the other day. It's just quite, my mum told me not to compartmentalise it. Oh, actually, I'll tell you something really interesting. After I'd witnessed the shocking event it was quite traumatic i happened to have my game boy with me which had tetris and there was an oxford study that said if you play tetris within six hours of a traumatic event it can actually help to reduce post-traumatic stress so after i went back up to my hotel room after the police were there and you know the the chap you know definitely he tried they tried

some cpr and he was declared dead and you know we've given our statements he could go upstairs um i played tetris for quite a while before i did my gig and i'm actually pretty convinced it helped actually because i've i felt okay you know definitely something i had to process a bit i felt okay um in terms of my anxiety anyway so you know if you've got a game boy and some tetris do it if you see anything shocking it might help all right on that note have a lovely week and i'll speak to you next week for oh the last one of the series who will it be? See you soon. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm

I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm

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